House & Garden Ideas, Tips & Guides

A city garden by Luciano Giubbilei, where an interesting mix of shapes and textures is provided by the foliage of a multi-stemmed Acer palmatum, a wisteria and a mound of Euphorbia mellifera.

Drought-tolerant, laden with nectar, evergreen, long-flowering, and so pungent that it fills the garden with scent, lavender is deservedly popular. The late garden designer Rosemary Verey said, «You can never have too much of it in your garden». In its preferred conditions, of well-drained soil that is baked by the sun, it is easy to grow.

At the back of the house, Adirondack chairs are placed beside a border with a small standard wisteria, a box spiral and purple Iris ‘Art Deco’ set off by lime-green euphorbia. An unknown red rose on the wall is from Mark Rumary’s 1960s scheme.

During May, the charity Plantlife encourages people not to mow their lawns. As well as attracting and helping wildlife, it's an opportunity to enjoy the sight of flowers blooming in long grass. Observing what appears – from interesting wildflowers (orchids, perhaps) to wildlife (such as grasshoppers) – is fun and, obviously, No Mow saves a lot of time. However, going the whole hog isn't for everyone. Those with children who enjoy careering around the lawn and people who entertain in their gardens won't want to let all their grass grow long. Therefore, a smaller No Mow area is more appealing and something that can be kept up throughout the summer.

Orange ‘Fire King’ wallflowers and reddish-purple ‘Slawa’, ‘Merlot’ and ‘Rem’s Favourite’ tulips in Sarah Raven's cutting garden.

May is historically the hungry gap in the vegetable garden, because it is the time when the winter crops run out and before the summer crops get going. If you have been well organised, you may have some early crops of salad leaves, broad beans, radishes and even strawberries to harvest towards the end of the month – as well as asparagus, which is at its prime now. But the main focus this month is the sowing, nurturing and tending of your crops, as growth accelerates. Potatoes should be earthed up so the tubers are not exposed to light, while peas and broad beans need supporting with pea sticks or canes and twine as they get bigger. Weeding must be done regularly (little and often is my motto) and, if the weather is dry, watering is essential. It is best done as a thorough soak every few days rather than a scant daily sprinkling. At the start of May, I sow tender crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes in seed trays and individual pots. I keep these in the greenhouse until later in the month, when it has warmed up and they can go outside. As the month goes on, the focus shifts to planting out. I find it very satisfying to be able to plant a neat row of seedlings along a garden line, rather than try the lottery of direct sowing into the ground, then thinning out. Using the no-dig method, I will have already prepared my beds with a layer of well-rotted compost. Just before planting out, I will rake the bed to break down any larger clods and give the seedlings a better chance of establishing.

Pale brick pavers, laid in a herringbone pattern, run from the open-plan ground floor out into the garden, creating a seamless transition between the two spaces.

Putting plants together is the most creative and joyful part of making a garden. With colour, shape and texture, you can conjure up a living work of art, something that not only gives you sensory pleasure but also benefits wildlife and the environment. But with so many options available to us, where do we start? I always think back to the plantswoman Beth Chatto and her mantra ‘right plant, right place’ when conceiving a plan, because there is no point in rushing to place your favourite sun-loving flowers in a shady spot at the back of a north-facing house. ‘Plants, like people, have their preferences and don’t like being thrust into the nearest available hole,’ she observed.

The garden room at the back of the Buchanan's inner-city London garden

The less common Allium ‘Mount Everest’

Most house plants are not notoriously hard to grow, indeed some might suggest that most are pretty easy. So why do so many of us amateur growers end up with a plant graveyard instead of a flourishing indoor display? It could be because you're choosing plants that need a lot of care and attention rather than ones which are quite happy to endure the occasional bout of neglect. In at extract from At Home with Plants, a useful guide to houseplants by indoor garden maestro Ian Drummond and Kara O'Reilly, Interiors Editor of lifestyle magazine Resident, we present a list of easy plants ranging from 'tolerant' to 'virtually indestructible'.

Much like the tradition of birth stones, the origins of birth flowers are shrouded in mystery. But it's likely that since the time of the ancient Romans, people have been assigning seasonal flowers to the months of the year, the better to use them as gifts and decoration for those born in that month. It's a pretty loose tradition, and opinions vary on the correct birth flower for some months; most, in fact, have ended up with two. Some of these work best when planted in a garden, others are spectacular flowers for bouquets and arrangements. Scroll down to find your own birth flowers, and you'll know what flowers to order when your birthday rolls around.

The kitchen garden at Alison Jenkins' Somerset smallholding

Straddling the seasons, rhododendrons are the buxom queens of spring, leading us into the floriferous summer months without any subtlety. They can grow into vast shrubs that, in bloom, are wondrous clouds of colour formed of handful-sized flowerheads.

A large part of the appeal of tulips lies in their wonderful ability to make a bold statement indoors – how when they’re cut and displayed, they take on something of the character of the space in which they sit. Tulips grow into the room. They move and twist towards the light. Their colours bounce around objects and furniture. Tulips simply have an uncanny ability to elevate the interior decoration.

Sweet-scented and soft-petalled, peonies are one of the world's favourite flowers. Though they tend to have a short but glorious blooming season peaking in May, peonies are likely to appear in flower shops and on farm stands from late March. With a myriad variety of the flower – herbaceous, tree and the enormous hybrid of the two – there are many ways to grow and care for these lovely flowers. If treated well from the outset, in fact, each type of peony will continue to flower for more than half a century.

Gardening is not an inherent knowledge that we all magically have. Simply because you have some green space, it does not mean you know what to do with it and we cannot all be Tom Stuart-Smith, Arne Maynard or Gertrude Jekyll, more's the pity. So what do you do if you have a garden but have no idea how to garden?

This is one of the busiest months in the vegetable garden with a flurry of sowing. I tend to sow most things in seed trays or modules initially, but the soil should be warm enough now to direct-sow most hardy vegetable varieties, including beetroot, chard, carrots and salad crops, straight into the ground. If doing this, use a traditional garden line to create drills and follow the spacing guidelines on each seed packet. Tender crops can also be sown under cover, in modular seed trays (tomatoes, sweet peppers and chillies) or 6-7cm pots (courgettes and squash). Pot these on as they get larger, or plant outside once the weather is warmer towards the end of May.

A farm turned garden near Toledo in Spain by landscape designer Fernando Martos

In March 1910, readers of The Daily Mail were confronted with an advertisement that read, ‘Ten Thousand Englishwomen could be ranged in a line and shot. No one would be sorry. Everyone would be glad. There isn’t any place for them.’ This was pretty strong stuff, but it was just an extreme example of a widely held belief: that the country was burdened with ‘surplus women’. In 1854, author and social campaigner Harriet Martineau estimated that there were over 500,000 more women than men in Great Britain; by 1891, the number had risen to over 900,000. The chief reason given at the time was the high level of emigration among young men seeking opportunities across the British Empire. Every young man signing up to be a colonist, a member of the armed forces, a civil servant or a trader in the British colonies was one less for the women left at home to woo and catch. There was real anxiety that as a result there were ‘surplus women’ who would not find a husband to take care of them after their fathers died. The ‘surplus’ or ‘redundant’ women that bothered commentators most were middle- and upper-class women. Single working-class women were not viewed as surplus; they could go into paid occupations deemed suitable to their station, such as domestic service or factories. For ‘respectable’ women higher up the social scale, however, conventional society offered very few options.

Rembrandt Gardens, Little Venice

I am often asked by clients if I can make their small garden feel bigger. There are some easy tricks that will help. You can create a journey by changing the direction of a path or introduce a level change. Reflections that trick the eyes, false entrances, hidden zones and borrowed landscapes will also help to make your garden feel larger. Even a balcony can feel more spacious if you keep the floor space clear, avoid too much clutter and use the vertical surfaces for planting. Wall mirrors can trick the eye into thinking the space is bigger, too. Or, if you want to be creative, how about painting a landscape mural on a wall or commissioning an artist to do this?

Instagram is a constant source of inspiration for those of us in the design world. Bursting with beautiful interiors and gardens, it's the perfect way to keep up with the news and, frankly, to just wallow in lovely imagery. Here are our picks of the best gardeners to follow, from the world's top garden designers to exciting emerging talents.

Charlie on his balcony

The beautiful balcony plants on the terrace at the London house of Henrietta Courtauld of the Land Gardeners

This is a purposeful moment in the vegetable garden. Spring is in the air and I’m gearing up for the busiest time of year. You can start sowing hardy crops such as broad beans, chard, beetroot, lettuce and carrots. But the weather and soil can still be cold in March, so only sow seeds outdoors if you are feeling confident it is warm enough. Alternatively – and, I think, preferably – you can start sowing these crops under cover, either germinating them indoors and growing them on in a cold frame, or in a greenhouse. Sowing seeds in trays and modules gives you more control, as you can plant them out as seedlings rather than taking the risk of leaving them to germinate in the ground. A compromise is to sow seeds in raised troughs, where the soil will be warmer and you can cover them with cloches or panes of glass to protect them further. However, onion sets and garlic can be planted straight out in the garden now.

There’s no denying that gardening is an occupation that throws up a lot of questions, but garden design apps can help. Whether you’re new to it or a seasoned, green fingered pro, big projects like landscaping or planning a garden from scratch need a lot of information along the way (which a garden designer can help with if you have one, but these apps will help if you don’t) but it’s the smaller issues like plant identification or concerns about flowers that are equally tricky and it can be a nuisance to dig out a book to help you.

Ivy on the front of James Mackie's cottage

It’s been said of Ginger Rogers — the dancer best known for her partnership with Fred Astaire — that she did everything the man did, only backwards and in high heels. As a container gardener, you will be following the same basic principles of ordinary, in-the-ground gardening, but you may face a few extra challenges along the way. This is largely because the plants are strictly confined and depend on you to be ready to notice problems and to intervene. With practice your show can be as spectacular and effortless-looking as Ginger’s performances.

Galanthus x hybridus ‘Robin Hood’ at Thenford Arboretum

If one of your New Year resolutions is to grow fruit and vegetables, take the time now to design the plot and you will reap the rewards in just a few months. I started six years ago with a blank canvas – just a patch of lawn divided into various spaces, including a vegetable garden. Separated from the rest of the garden by a hornbeam hedge and a trellis of espaliered apples, my vegetable plot is 11.3 x 5.3 metres, with an extra 3.7 metres square tagged onto the side to make it L-shaped. A greenhouse at the far end faces out over three long raised beds and a square bed to the side.

A small vegetable garden sits in front of the guest house at this elegant Georgian home in Oxfordshire

Without doubt the biggest change to gardening over the past decade or so has been the rise in interest and love for plants that can be grown and nurtured indoors.

Snowdrops work well in a mixed planting in a container, but equally well planted as a group on their own

Cotoneasters are not a well-known group of plants, and these excellent berrying shrubs are often unfairly labelled dull. The culprit responsible for this reputation is Cotoneaster horizontalis (wall spray), which sprawls across front gardens and car parks up and down the country, and is, admittedly, rather dull. But, beyond the ubiquitous blandness of C. horizontalis, there are many wonderful cotoneasters that deserve to be more widely grown.

White Christmas Cactus, £11.99 from Hortology